Adventures in Remjet: My experience shooting Vision3 motion picture film
Repurposed film, Lightroom grading, Old School Photolab, and Midwest Film Co.
I shot all of the photos for my Capturing the Hopeful Side of Washington D.C. project for The Radavist, and my submission to No Tourists Magazine on 35mm Eastman Kodak Vision 3 motion picture film. It’s big bulk rolled motion picture cameras film that' has been cut down to 39 exposure rolls for shooting still photography on a hand held camera. The more recent idea to do an entire photoessay with photographic film designed for motion pictures was mostly driven by wanting a subtle nod to the typically “cinematic” portrayals of my primary subject, the city of Washington DC, but it did create some challenges.
The biggest challenge was that there are only a handful of labs in the country that will touch this shit on account of the Remjet, a thin layer of carbon compound that is added to the film during manufacturing to reduce friction when the film is run through a motion picture camera. Without it, accidental exposure would occur from sparks when the film is running through the camera at high speeds. When using the film stock for stills photography the Remjet must be removed by hand, in a darkroom, before dumping the film into chemistry or else the Remjet will partially dissolve and turn the developer into a sticky mess. Another, smaller issue is that the ISO of these film stocks are unconventional for stills photography (250, 500) and you won’t find a corresponding ISO setting on most light meters. The faster film, the 500 is balanced for artificial tungsten lighting. Remember, this stuff is made for movies. A lot of photography for films takes place is a Hollywood studio, so having a film that makes artificial light look like daylight is pretty handy for that application. Using tungsten light balanced film in actual daylight though? oof. it is very, very blue.
500T tungsten balanced shot in daylight.
Colors as scanned.
250D daylight balanced, shot in daylight.
Colors as scanned.
Despite this I emotionally committed to the silly idea of only using this type of film for the project, and went hunting for a lab that would develop it for me. There are other reasons someone might want to shoot this film for stills photography, besides symbolism of course, and I’ll get in to those reasons here in a few lines. My intent here is to break down my experience working exclusively with this filmstock for a big project, and compare and contrast the experience working with the two labs that helped me develop and scan this film.
I love this portrait of Libby, the colors are true to life and yet it’s got a nice cinematic look to it. Developed and scanned by Midwest Film Co.
First things first: why would someone go through the trouble of shooting this film?
It’s pretty cheap. Sorta. Film prices have gone through the roof the last few years and because this film stock is designed for motion pictures its only manufactured and sold in massive quantities. Like buying anything in bulk, this means it’s cheaper. A good number of darkrooms all over the country buy big ass reels of this stuff rerolling it into spent 35mm cartridges left over from previous 35mm dark room customers. The bulk rolls are cheap enough that even after this the manual labor of doing this they can turn a profit selling the roles for 2/3rds the price or less of a typical roll of consumer grade film. Neat. Disclaimer though, with ANY bulk rolled film that uses a recycle film cartridge there is the risk the felt seal that keeps light out of the cartridge could be worn out, which means light can seep in. This is really only a problem for those cameras that have a little window on the back that lets you see what film you have loaded. If your camera has one, its safer to just cover it with some gaffer tape.
This isn’t Vision 3, but it is “bulk loaded” and was shot on a camera that has a film preview indow, the source of the obvious light leak.
There is another problem for penny pinchers though: the development process. Thanks to that pesky Remjet, and a special chemical bath recommended for this film once that layer is removed (ECN-2) only a handful of labs are willing or set up to deal with it. Because of the scarcity, and labor involved, development costs are 5 to 10 dollars more expensive per roll. That’s a bigger cost difference than the savings you get from shooting this stuff in the first place. Unless you are developing your own film and willing to sit in the dark scrubbing Remjet off, cost is not a good reason to do this.
The other reason, which is a better reason depending on how the film is developed and scanned is that it offers you an incredible amount detail, sharpness, and latitude with the digital scans. Because this stuff is designed for cinematographers, it gives the editor as much freedom to develop the “look” they want from the film as possible. Taylor Pendleton aka Graincheck does a really nice job of explaining and demoing this process in her Youtube video on the topic, so take a break here and check that out.
Remember that thing about the tungsten balanced film? This was shot on 500T tungsten balanced film, but thanks to the flexibility of these scans I was able to get this looking pretty natural.
Now, to obtain these benfits you really need to treat this film as motion picture film through the whole process. If you develope it in standard C-41 color chemistry and/or scan it with a normal film scanner like a Noritsu HS-1800 it’s going to come out looking more like a typical color film. It still has a unique look that strikes me as sort of a warmed up or kinda brownish Fujifilm Superia, but it doesn’t give you much in the way of latitude.
Scanned on a Noritsu HS-1800 and graded by the lab, Old School Photo Lab.
Scanned on a Black Magic Cintel scanner and delivered as a flat file by Midwest Film Co. Graded by me in Lightroom.
I shot this project over the course of two summers, 2022 and 2023. In 2022, I sent all the rolls I shot to Old School Photo Lab in New Hampshire. Old School is a great lab that will develop just about any kind of film you want, including this ECN-2 motion picture film. Ultimately though, because they are scanning and grading these rolls like they would a roll of Kodak Gold the look I got from the scans was nice but I don’t look at these and think “I am Hollywood.” Don’t get me wrong, I am happy with the resulting images and the greens are really nice and vivid especially, but it left me wondering what would be possible from this film stock if scanned on a motion picture scanner.
Colors with a vintage vibe from the Vision 3 250D as developed and scanned by Old School Photo Lab
In comes Midwest Film Co. Starting with my second batch of images I started sending them to Justin in Wichita, Kansas. Midwest handles developing both stills and motion picture projects, and uses the motion picture scanner for both. From their website:
We are scanning 35mm on a motion picture scanner (BlackMagic Cintel) which is quite a bit different from traditional stills scanners. Your images will be delivered “flat” which means they will need to be edited using your favorite photo editing software to add contrast and saturation. Images are approximately 6000x4000px TIFFs.
Read that again. 6000x4000 pixels. These files are fucking HUGE. They are about 75 MB EACH. And they are in fact very, very flat. There is no true white or true black, which means a ton of detail in the highlights and shadows. If you properly expose the photo, or even get close, you will have a ton to work with in lightroom. Here is a comparison of the original scan and finished product using an image I captured during DCCX but ultimately didn’t use for the article.
Ungraded, as delivered by Midwest Film Co. You could easily add or subtract 3 stops of light from this image before blowing out the highlights or burying the shadows.
After boosting exposure, adding back shadows, boosting saturation, and warming the colors up just a little bit.
As nice as the scans from Old School are, I am obsessed with the final look of these Midwest Film Co. scans. And I had so much fun grading the film scans to the exact look I wanted I have been habitually sending even more normal C41 like Portra 400 to Midwest Film Co so I can have the negatives scanned on his Cintel scanner
Vision 3 250D Motion Picture Film - the colors are insane, I am so obsessed.
Portra 400 (yes, this photo is sharper but it’s not the film, it’s the lens. I shot this with a Contax G1 and the famously sharp Carl Zeiss 45mm)
Another thing people have said about this film is that it is really friendly to pushing and pulling. Normally you only would try to “push” black and white film. Pushing color film usually results in strange colors and a ton of graininess. I had been experimenting for a few months shooting this film at increasingly high light sensitivity (ISO) and Justin at Midwest has been a great partner experimenting with pushing this film. With this film’s natural flexibility and the ability to make dramatic color adjustments on the flat files, I started getting braver and braver with just how extreme I was willing to push this film. The final shoot to round this project out was a night shoot following the DC bike party on one of their monthly rides. It was dark as hell, and I decided to see if I could push this concept to its logical conclusion.
Look, the photo is pretty dark, and the colors are a little strange (green) but I shot this at 6400 ISO. This is 500T. That means I effectively underexposed this by 4 to 5 stops. That'‘s WILD. You can’t even do that with the famously flexible Ilford HP5 black and white film and get something usable. Only within the last decade could digital cameras deliver useable images at this ISO.
So what else there to say about this process…. This was a fun project for a lot of reasons, made more fun by taking the opportunity to experiment with some new film stocks. So thank you to Old School and especially Midwest Film Co. for making this possible. The bottom line: If you want nice looking scans with no extra work on your end, Old School won’t do you wrong, but if you are like me and want to embrace the cinematic workflow and grade your own images Midwest Film Co offers you a truly special and unique opportunity to express yourself through analogue film, one that I find exceptionally rewarding.
-Andy
